The area of the present invention more specifically relates to a machine units used in automotive shops, so-called automotive shop equipment. In particular, the present invention relates to a technique for updating or upgrading data or software installed in such a machine unit. Among such machine units, there are some considered as high-end equipment, such as wheel balancers, wheel aligners, brake testing stands and so forth, which comprise embedded computer hardware (HW), on which dedicated software (SW) is running for controlling several functions related to the respective service given by the machine unit, and also for processing of data as, for instance, measurement data related to the respective services performed on an automotive vehicle, or data related to the automotive vehicle which are required for the service to be performed and so forth.
For instance, a premium or high-end wheel balancer, i.e. a machine unit which comprises most developed technology as it regards the requirements necessary for the automotive service to be performed as well as it regards the human interface to the user of the machine unit, making the machine easy to use as well as more efficient in view of quality of service performed by the machine. Such a premium machine unit usually includes a display as visual user interface for presenting information to the user, a keyboard or at least a keypad as an interface for input of commands or data by the user, which data may be required to select among several service functions provided by the machine, or to setup a certain service function to the particular automotive vehicle to be serviced next with certain configuration data required for performing the service correctly.
As to computer hardware in such computerized or processor-controlled machines, a computer-controlled system comprises fixed memory in which fixed content stays resident. Such content is mainly used for the software programs which control the respective machine unit or certain computer controlled hardware, such as microcontroller-based hardware boards, e.g. for sensing purposes and/or actuating purposes. Further content may be data required by the machine during operation as mentioned above. An embedded computer system may be a computer board of a personal computer according to the industry standard, where software may be divided into basic input output routines, the operating system run on the computer as platform for application programs for access to the several function provided by the machine unit. Further, in the fixed memory can also be located help or support information for the user and/or screen texts in different languages, icons and graphics, fonts, printout style sheets and so forth. The fixed memory devices with the fixed contents are used during operation in “read-only” mode; that is, their data can be read but not be modified.
FIG. 1 shows a simplified sketch of a (circuit) board 10 of a microcontroller-based board, which can be used for control of a certain technical function performed by the machine unit. The board 10 comprises a microcontroller μC, a flash memory FLASH, and random access memory modules RAM1, RAM2 as working memory. Further, the board comprises several connectors X1 to X9, which are used, for example, for connection to power supply, or interfaces to actuators and/or from sensors of the machine unit and so forth, which implementation is all well known per se.
In this context, it is further known that memory devices with fixed content can be made removable by use of removable connected memory units, such as an electrical programmable read-only memories (EPROM) device, which are available in several form factors and packages. For instance, a removable connected EEPROM storage device allows for service personal to update or upgrade, respectively, the SW of the machine unit by replacing the present memory device with an (exchange) memory device containing the updated or upgraded, respectively, content data. Furthermore, in the prior art memory devices with fixed content are usually programmed in the factory of the manufacturer of the machine unit and are installed first time during production of the unit or machine.
Alternatively, it may be also possible to perform a SW update by a download procedure by which new content to the respective memory device is downloaded, for instance, by means of an external service PC connected to the low level hardware board, e.g. by a serial line interface connection. However, it is worth noting, that even that SW upgrade is possible by serial line download using a PC, this feature is not used in practice in the field.
Further, currently the computer system of such computerized machine units collect a list of operational data, such as issued error codes, calibration data, user preferences, operation counters and alike, in small EPROMs which are also installed on the low level HW boards. For feedback to the manufacturer of the machines, such collected data could provide worthwhile information for the development of future machines or improvement of the machines in the shops.